{"id":437635,"date":"2026-05-21T02:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T02:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/437635\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T02:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T02:18:08","slug":"woman-who-inspired-the-band-name-greta-van-fleet-dies-at-95","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/437635\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman who inspired the band name Greta Van Fleet dies at 95"},"content":{"rendered":"

FRANKENMUTH, Mich. (AP) \u2014 Gretna Van Fleet didn\u2019t play music with Greta Van Fleet. But maybe she got the next best thing: The Grammy-winning rock band<\/a> uses her name.<\/p>\n

The 95-year-old Michigan woman died Monday at a senior living center in Frankenmuth, according to her obituary,<\/a> the same community where the band was formed in 2012 when Van Fleet was in her 80s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they checked out my background to make sure I wasn\u2019t on the Ten Most Wanted list or something, and they went ahead with it,\u201d Van Fleet jokingly told MLive.com in 2019, ahead of the band\u2019s appearance on \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut later, when I met the boys, I said, \u2018That\u2019s OK.\u2019 But, no, they did not approach me to begin with,\u201d Van Fleet said.<\/p>\n

Kyle Hauck, a drummer in the band\u2019s early days, has told interviewers that a name was needed in time for a local performance. He said he heard his grandfather talk about helping a friend, Gretna Van Fleet. Something clicked. The band dropped the \u2018n\u2019 in Gretna and Greta Van Fleet was born.<\/p>\n

The band won a Grammy in 2019 for best rock album, \u201cFrom The Fires,\u201d and had other nominations that year. Greta Van Fleet\u2019s \u201cStarcatcher\u201d was nominated for best album in 2024.<\/p>\n

Gretna Van Fleet\u2019s obituary describes her, too, as being \u201cmusically talented,\u201d playing a variety of instruments including saxophone, violin, tuba and piano. <\/p>\n

She said in the 2019 interview that her favorite song by the band was \u201cFlower Power.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a couple others that I like, but that\u2019s not really my style,\u201d Van Fleet said of the music. \u201cIt\u2019s not my era that they\u2019re making popular come back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRANKENMUTH, Mich. (AP) \u2014 Gretna Van Fleet didn\u2019t play music with Greta Van Fleet. But maybe she got…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5580,15182,156,3717,223795,149434,2145,157,111,139,136025,69,5021],"class_list":["post-437635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-domestic-news","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-kyle-hauck","tag-mi-state-wire","tag-michigan","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-notable-deaths","tag-nz","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}